Backup With Rsync — Local to Remote — Ansible module synchronize

How to automate the backup of an “examples” directory minimizing network usage on Linux using Ansible module synchronize and rsync utility.

How to backing up with rsync with Ansible?
I’m going to show you a live demo and some simple Ansible code.
I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot.

Ansible backup with rsync

• `ansible.posix.synchronize`
• `synchronize` is a wrapper around rsync to make common tasks in your playbooks quick and easy.

Today we’re talking about the Ansible module `synchronize`.

The full name is `ansible.posix.synchronize`, which means that is part of the collection targeting POSIX platforms.

A wrapper around `rsync` to make common tasks in your playbooks quick and easy.

rsync is a utility for efficiently transferring and synchronizing files between a computer and a storage drive and across networked computers by comparing the modification times and sizes of files.

rsync must be installed on both the local and remote host.

Currently, there are only a few connection types that support synchronize (ssh, paramiko, local, and docker) because a sync strategy has been determined for those connection types.

Main Parameters

• src string — source path — absolute or relative
• dest string — destination path — absolute or relative
• archive boolean — mirrors the Rsync archive flag, enables recursive, links, perms, times, owner, group flags, and -D
• rsync_opts string — no/yes

The parameter list is pretty wide but these are the most important options of `synchronize` module.

The only mandatory parameters are “src” and “dest” parameters.